Carbon material is very useful material that is applied in many different industries such as a catalyst, a fuel cell, electrode material for a secondary cell, a super capacitor, composite materials, a gas sensor, a solar cell various electronic devices and the like. Carbon is being applied in a great variety of forms.
Particularly, carbon fiber, carbon nanotube and the like have very excellent mechanical properties while having high conductivity, and for active carbon or amorphous carbon with very high specific surface area, due to the high porosity and stable property, a lot of studies are being progressed in the field of electrode material for a fuel cell and a secondary cell. And, it draws attention as gas storage material for fuel such as hydrocarbon and hydrogen and the like, or a separation body that can purify contaminated area or harmful gas such as carbon dioxide and the like
Recently, carbide derived carbon (CDC) is studied as porous carbon material and is receiving lots of attention (Gogotsi et al. 1997 J. Mater. Chem. 7: 1841-1848: Boehm et al. Proc. 12th Biennial Conf. on Carbon 149-150 (Pergamoii, Oxford, 1975). Most amorphous CDC has micropores of 2 nm or less, and thus, it was reported, to selectively produce 0.6˜0.9 nm pores that are ideal for hydrogen storage.
However, mesopores of 2 nm or more are also in great demand in various industries such as semiconductor or large gas storage, adsorption body of medical therapeutics or lubricant adsorbent and the like.
Recently, control of pore volume as well as control of specific surface area and pore size draws attention as more important property. Thus, in order to control pores, CDC synthesis was attempted using various raw materials. As the raw materials of CDC, most carbides such as TiC, ZrC, WC, SiC, TaC, B4C, HfC, Al4C3 and the like were used, but noticeable result according to the kind of metal atoms of carbide was not obtained and CDC that can form mesopores of 2 nm or more has not been reported yet.
Boron nitride (BN) theoretically has bond energy of 1.5 or more times compared to the carbonous materials. This results from hetero-polarity of boron nitride, and the bond energy of carbanous material is 0.05˜0.06 ev/atom while the bond energy of BN is 0.09˜0.1 ev/atom. A lot of studies have been reported thereon, and a template method and a substitution method are major synthesis methods currently known. However, the specific surface area (SSA) of boron nitrides so far reported is very low compared to carbonons materials. If a measure to effectively increase the specific surface area is secured, boron nitride material could replace various pore materials including carbonous materials.